Lloyd Bryce

Lloyd Stephens Bryce (September 4, 1851 – April 2, 1917) was a U.S. Representative from New York.

His father, Joseph Smith Bryce, graduated from West Point in 1829, third in his class (Robert E. Lee was first). J. S. Bryce was a Union Major in the Civil War, engaged in the defense of Washington D. C.

Born in Flushing, New York, Bryce attended the public schools and Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.. He was graduated from Oxford University, England, in 1874. He studied law at Columbia Law School, New York City. Bryce was an avid sports enthusiast. He wrote that sports were capable both of quelling revolutionary thought among the poor and promoting understanding between nations. Much of his time was spent playing Polo in Newport and Manhattan and going on fox hunts on Long Island.

In 1879 he married Edith Cooper, the only child of New York City Mayor Edward Cooper, and granddaughter of the famous industrialist Peter Cooper. Bryce, a Democrat, eventually became interested in politics. In 1886 New York Governor David B. Hill appointed him Paymaster General of the state, giving him the rank of Brigadier-General. Afterwards he was known as General Bryce, though he never served in the military.

Bryce was elected as a Democrat to the Fiftieth Congress (March 4, 1887-March 3, 1889). He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1888 to the Fifty-first Congress. His friend Allen Thorndike Rice, the editor of the North American Review, died unexpectedly and left the magazine to Bryce in his will. Bryce was the owner and editor 1889-1896.

Influenced by his experience in Congress he wrote an early Yellow Peril story, called Dream of Conquest for the June 1889 issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. He was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Netherlands August 12, 1911, and served to September 10, 1913. In 1914 his daughter Cornelia married conservationist Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the Forest Service under Theodore Roosevelt. He died in Mineola, Long Island, April 2, 1917. He was interred in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.

References

• Lloyd Bryce at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress